The California-based Center for Truth & Justice [8] (CFTJ) published a report [9] April 18 purporting that acts of genocide have been committed in the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region and Armenian border provinces, and calling upon the International Court of Justice to open an investigation. The CFTJ claims that Azerbaijani security forces have evicted ethnic Armenians from their native lands in these areas since the war of 2020, documenting instances of torture, arbitrary detentions and extrajudicial killings.
The CFTJ report claims that acts by the Azerbaijani armed forces meet both the actus reus [11] and mens rea [12] elements for genocide, prohibited under Article II(c) of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide [13]. Under this provision, "genocide" is defined as "deliberately inflicting upon the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its destruction in whole or in part." (Jurist [14], CivilNet [15], AP [16])
The Armenian government meanwhile continues to make territorial concessions to Azerbaijan. Yerevan announced [17]April 19 that it will return four villages to Azerbaijan as a result of the 8th meeting of the joint Commission on the Delimitation of the State Border. Baku celebrated the return of the villages it said had been "under occupation" by Armenia since the war of the early 1990s. (Jurist [18], Al Jazeera [19])
Nonetheless, Armenia's government decried what it called modern-day "ethnic cleansing" as it commemorated Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day on April 24. "In 2020-2023, we faced new manifestations and consequences of the policy of ethnic cleansing," the foreign ministry said in a statement. "More than 150,000 Armenians were...forced to leave their historical homeland because of war, xenophobia, crimes based on identity." (TNA [20])
